Innovative cooperation between SDU and ”Det Blå Gymnasium”
104 high school students from ”Det Blå Gymnasium” in Sønderborg and Selandia Slagelse attended an innovation camp recently. Over the course of two days, the high school students worked through an innovation process facilitated by engineering students from the University of Southern Denmark in Sønderborg.
For the fifth time, “Det Blå Gymnasium” and Selandia Slagelse have gathered a large group of student with the purpose of strengthening their innovative competences. As something now this year the camp was arranged by the Mads Clausen Institute of the University of Southern Denmark in Sønderborg and facilitated by three students from the engineering study program Innovation and Business. The camp lasted two days and tool place on August 25-26.
The assignment this year was named the The Innovative Canteen and focused on the challenges that arise in the school canteen and are felt daily by both staff and students. The assignment presented to the high school students was to find concrete creative solutions to alleviate these challenges.
Buffet table with alarm
-Do you recognize the situation when salad is missing on the buffet in the canteen and you have to wait before more arrives? This was the challenge faced by the winning team which after 48 hours of hard work held the trophy. The solution was a smart buffet table with weights, which automatically warns the canteen staff in the kitchen when food is missing on the buffet.
An important part of an innovation process is the development of proto types, which serve to demonstrate and test the function and design of the ideas. To complete this part of the workshop, the high school students worked with LEGO Mindstorms. The students both built and programmed in order to make it easy for the judges to see what the prototypes illustrated.
-It’s important that we cooperate across the educational institutions and that we make the high school students conscious of the possibilities they have after graduating high school. Even though the high school students of “Det Blå Gymnasium” have a mercantile profile, we see more and more that they later chose an engineering study program with focus on innovation and entrepreneurship, says Carina Pedersen, innovation coordinator at “Det Blå Gymnasium” in Sønderborg.
-We hope to continue the prosperous collaboration with SDU about the innovation camp. The high school students have shown great satisfaction with the camp and not least the three engineering students, who both counselled and coached the high school students to good results, says Carina Pedersen.
Innovation camp for high schools
Engineering students from SDU Campus Sønderborg can also come to your school to help carry out an innovation camp. Read more here: Innovation and Business camp (in Danish only).
Photo: High school students work with LEGO Mindstorms.